Microsoft Says U.S. Science Education Needs $5 Billion

[madjimms]

[citation][nom]timw03878[/nom]The biggest question is.. Why is the government involved in education?How bout letting the market fulfill the demand they tout, rather than using stolen money via taxes to pay for something I won't benefit from?[/citation]
In order for a society to function properly it needs SOME collectivism (a type of communism/socialism) even basic Native American tribes were technically Communists for 10,000+ years.

 

[benji720]

[citation][nom]fuxxnuts[/nom]Guess they aren't interested in English grammar, either.[/citation]
I'm right their with you, bro.

 

[nieur]

Meanwhile apple will say government needs invest billions on law school so that next generation of apple army is skilled enough.

 

[timw03878]

[citation][nom]madjimms[/nom]You mean poor people being too poor to get an education? & rich kids squandering a REALLY fancy education by becoming a sports "star" or actor.... Yeah, FREE MARKER FOR THE LOSS!What a complete dolt you are.[/citation]

Apparently your not aware that the "poor" in this nation have cable TV, a car, and a cell phone.

The free market did that pal...
Every major innovation and standard of living progress we enjoy was done thru a free market.

Maybe the poor can get rid of their cable subscription and use that money towards education.
Hell, an internet bill and google, and you can get educated.

Why don't you start thinking for yourself instead of thinking the government has to do everything for those who are poor.

The level of education has been going down ever sense the department of education was introduced.
Or didn't you know that?

I suggest you read a book before you bring your emotional argument into the picture.

 

[Max Collodi]

[citation][nom]madjimms[/nom]Actually the RATIO of money spent on education isn't the best in the world... the gross amount? absolutely. But certainly not the highest percentage.[/citation]
Actually, when it comes to the most money spent per student, the US is number two. Switzerland is number one. What I find interesting is the country that spends the highest percentage of their GDP on education is Cuba. A remarkable 18.7%. In this category the US ranks at number 37 at 5.7%.

 

[kyee7k]

[citation][nom]timw03878[/nom]Apparently your not aware that the "poor" in this nation have cable TV, a car, and a cell phone.The free market did that pal...Every major innovation and standard of living progress we enjoy was done thru a free market.Maybe the poor can get rid of their cable subscription and use that money towards education.Hell, an internet bill and google, and you can get educated.Why don't you start thinking for yourself instead of thinking the government has to do everything for those who are poor.The level of education has been going down ever sense the department of education was introduced.Or didn't you know that?I suggest you read a book before you bring your emotional argument into the picture.[/citation]
I don't know if it's called the Universal Service Fund (which costs each consumer about 15.7% of your phone bill), but phone/cell/broadband services are provided to low-income families at a discount.

As for schools, is MS referring to secondary or post-secondary schools? If it's the latter, then K-12 should be de-unionized and control be given back to the local level--otherwise, $5 billion will effortlessly disappear within the backward and corrupt system.
As for our education system, we should segregate students according to their career path by bypassing traditional school system and transition into vocational or college-bound careers like they do in the European schools(German, since that is what I'm familiar with).

 

[kyee7k]

[citation][nom]kyee7k[/nom]I don't know if it's called the Universal Service Fund (which costs each consumer about 15.7% of your phone bill), but phone/cell/broadband services are provided to low-income families at a discount.As for schools, is MS referring to secondary or post-secondary schools? If it's the former, then K-12 should be de-unionized and control be given back to the local level--otherwise, $5 billion will effortlessly disappear within the backward and corrupt system.As for our education system, we should segregate students according to their career path by bypassing traditional school system and transition into vocational or college-bound careers like they do in the European schools(German, since that is what I'm familiar with).[/citation]

 

[JonathanR]

[citation][nom]ikyung[/nom]There is no government in the world that spends as much as we do on education. For the past century the American government have been pouring in billions into schools, yet for some reason we have been dropping behind slowly. It has more to do with social and cultural issues rather then financial.[/citation]

Just some food for thought: I live and study in Switzerland. I pay full tuition for one of the top 20 universities in the world, #8 in my field (computer science) and significantly higher in several others. Wonder how much full tuition is at the university Einstein from?
Roughly 700$ per semester! Most of the rest is payed for by our awesome government!
Meanwhile the US is spending 6 times the amount on compared to the second most expensive military in the world (the chinese) and 6 times the percentage of GDP on military compared to Switzerland.
I personally think the raw numbers paint a tragic picture for a country that could have the potential to keep its leading role in the sciences if it just had a slightly different mentality. Not that Fox News gives a shit.

 

[JonathanR]

[citation][nom]ikyung[/nom]There is no government in the world that spends as much as we do on education. For the past century the American government have been pouring in billions into schools, yet for some reason we have been dropping behind slowly. It has more to do with social and cultural issues rather then financial.[/citation]

Just some food for thought: I live and study in Switzerland. I pay full tuition for one of the top 20 universities in the world, #8 in my field (computer science) and significantly higher in several others. Wonder how much full tuition is at the university Einstein graduated from?
Roughly 700$ per semester! Most of the rest is payed for by our awesome government!

Meanwhile the US is spending 6 times the amount on military compared to the second most expensive military in the world (the chinese) and 6 times the percentage of GDP on military compared to Switzerland.

I personally think the raw numbers paint a tragic picture for a country that could have the potential to keep its leading role in the sciences if it just had a slightly different mentality. Not that Fox News gives a shit.

Sorry for the double post, urls dont seem to have worked...

 

[icemunk]

[citation][nom]kcorp2003[/nom]Okay, i'm almost done with my college degree. I see students everyday in the train. Let me tell you, their not interested in math or science or technology. Their more into the entertainment business. They lack honor and discipline with a very short attention span and high temper.[/citation]

Good day Sir, I am going to take some time to reply to your STUPID grrr.. I'm getting angry, I'm going to counter your point Sir.. wait.. hmm cookies.. ok, I'll fiinish this later and prove your wrong 😛

 

[TheBigTroll]

if the US can just stop buying so many fighter jets and use that money to improve education.... Terrorists dont have fighter jets

 

[willard]

[citation][nom]DroKing[/nom]PhD degrees are overpriced in US. I dropped out of college myself because it was costing 4 grand a quarter uhh to expensive for me. Ill stick with working.[/citation]
You dropped out over 16k a year in tuition? Assuming this is a bachelor's degree (which it would pretty much have to be, it's easy to get free tuition as a graduate student working universities), you saved $80k over 5 years. If it's not a bachelor's, then I really, really question your decision to not simply get a fellowship for the free ride.

I think I'd like to do some quick math.

The average income for a person without a bachelor's degree is $25k a year and falling. The average income for somebody with a bachelor's degree is $40k and rising. So, working for five years you made $125k, while the college student spent $80k, giving you a head start of $205k. At average incomes, the college student will surpass your earnings in less than 14 years of working (mid thirties). By the age of retirement, the college student will have earned $300k more.

This is of course assuming that nobody gets any raises their whole life. In reality, college graduates get better jobs with more frequent raises (not to mention benefits absent from minimum wage jobs) and grow their salary year over year, while those without degrees grow much more slowly or not at all. The number I heard thrown around while in college was that college graduates, on average, made about $1,000,000 more over their lifetimes than people without degrees.

The whole "work instead of go to college" plan is almost never a good idea. Unless you happen to be somebody like Bill Gates and drop out of college to help invent a trillion dollar industry, then you're probably better off going ahead and getting that degree. In my experience, people who do this are really just looking for an excuse to not go to college because they're tired of being in school. Works out for some, but most end up cycling between horrible minimum wage jobs complaining about how unfair it is that they can't land a decent job. Meanwhile, people with degrees are working towards six figure salaries and bonuses that eclipse the drop out's annual pay.

 

[Au_equus]

Really? Have they looked at the unemployment rate for science PhDs? You bust your butt for 4+ years in a lab and what do you have to show for it? Last year for PhD chemists, you have 20% without a full-time permanent job and another 47% doing a post-doc (used to be 1-3yrs, now more like 5-10) or pursuing another degree (MD, PharmD, PE, etc) at no much more than a graduate stipend supervising grad students and higher work load. That should explain why nobody wants to go to graduate school. Its gotten so bad international students are taking their US PhDs back to their home country (China, India, Romania, France, Russia, etc.).
http://cen.acs.org/articles/90/i23/Starting-Salaries.html
My colleagues and myself have felt the sting of industry (notably big pharma) and government (grants and research, except military, apparently) cutting back on R&D. Most of these jobs Smith talks about are lower level entry jobs.

 

[d_kuhn]

[citation][nom]DroKing[/nom]PhD degrees are overpriced in US. I dropped out of college myself because it was costing 4 grand a quarter uhh to expensive for me. Ill stick with working.[/citation]

PhD's are indeed expensive and hard to justify from an economic perspective (you'll have a tough time making enough more compared to an MS to justify the cost), but if you're talented then you can often get a corporate sponsor for some or all of the cost.

$4k/quarter is CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP for a useful degree... I paid that for my BSEE... in the 80's! I now make that much in about a week - because of that investment in the 80's. If that's not a smoking deal I don't know what is.

 

[d_kuhn]

[citation][nom]JonathanR[/nom]Just some food for thought: I live and study in Switzerland. I pay full tuition for one of the top 20 universities in the world, #8 in my field (computer science) and significantly higher in several others. Wonder how much full tuition is at the university Einstein graduated from?Roughly 700$ per semester! Most of the rest is payed for by our awesome government!Meanwhile the US is spending 6 times the amount on military compared to the second most expensive military in the world (the chinese) and 6 times the percentage of GDP on military compared to Switzerland.I personally think the raw numbers paint a tragic picture for a country that could have the potential to keep its leading role in the sciences if it just had a slightly different mentality. Not that Fox News gives a shit.Sorry for the double post, urls dont seem to have worked...[/citation]

Well ETH Zurich is a very unique University... it's not as if the rest of the world follows the excellent (but expensive to the state) Swiss model and the US is the odd man out. While not as inexpensive as ETH Zurich, there are a number of excellent state schools in the US that are far more affordable than private schools... including some ranked even higher than 8th!

The trick of course is that those schools are very selective, and students talented enough to get into them are typically able to get a lot of help so the cost isn't as big a deal.

 

[falchard]

I bet a science degree would be popular if Microsoft paid students $3 an hour to work and learn at their Redmond Campus. The problem is US labor laws make this illegal. I know I would go to Redmond to get a phd from Microsoft if they paid me $120 a week instead of charging me $15k per year.

 

[the_brute]

i am up against people in the IT world that do not even know the difference between CAT 5 and CAT 3. Many people I went to college with (cisco networking) still have no clue of the difference between a switch and router, and have installed household wireless devices in a billion dollar company for a network.

On the other hand how many programmers/hardware people in the 1960-80s never spent a day in college and came up with technology that is still used today?

I got screwed by college. Program was "disassembled due to budget constraints" in my last semester (4 years) and told me I needed to take another 3.5 years to get new degree (BA for Information Technology when I was in for BS for Computer Science) Yes to everyone out there I did look into legal action and there is none that will work all 135 of us have tried. A total of tuition of $63,400 with book cost ~$5k. I had most covered by grants (several I have to repay because no degree within time frame) I still ended up with several thousand in loans.
The pres of the college got 3 6 digit raises and a 16 million dollar retirement package during this time.